The mostly widely used messaging systems include electronic mail (more commonly referred to as email) and voice messaging services that can be accessed by means of mobile or fixed telecommunication terminals, or even video messaging services that can be used by means of a video phone device.
More often than not, a message consists of a header (sender, receiver, subject of the message, date, etc.) and a body or content, either written in the case of electronic messages (email), or audio (voice messaging in fixed or mobile telephony), or even video in a telephone-video phone context.
Unified messaging systems are known from the prior art that enable a user to access and manage all his messages, regardless of their origin: electronic mail messaging, voice messaging, fax messaging, and by extension video messaging.
Generally, a unified messaging system consists of one or more messaging devices (commonly called messaging “back ends”) suitable for managing and storing messages and, associated with each of these messaging devices, one or more interfaces (commonly called messaging “front ends”) suitable for managing user access to their respective messaging services.
Also known from the prior art are four types of unified messaging architectures, mostly defined by software publishers and/or manufacturers such as Cisco, Alcatel, 3Com, Avaya, Cycos, Tetco (registered trade marks), for example.
A first type of unified messaging system architecture known from the prior art proposes unifying, on client stations or terminals a user's access to the messaging services with which he has one or more messaging accounts.
In such an architecture, a specific API (application programming interface) is defined to allow access to the voice messages stored on a PBX (private branch exchange, which designates, in a corporate installation, the device for internally exchanging data and linking with the telephone network) via a written messaging software executed on the client station or terminal.
Such a solution is, however, appropriate only for smaller corporate structures (small enterprises, mainly fewer than fifty employees). It is in fact relatively difficult to maintain technically all the software concerning the unification of access to the messages that are remotely cited on the client terminal or station. Furthermore, such an architecture necessitates providing and managing a number of messaging accounts for each user.
A second type of unified messaging system architecture known from the prior art implements synchronization between the various messaging server devices to allow them to be unified, that is to say, to enable the users who have a messaging account to be able to consult their electronic messages in the form of a voice message via their voice messaging service that can be accessed by means of their fixed or mobile communication terminal, and to be able to consult indiscriminately their voice messages that are available on the messaging service of their fixed or mobile telephone, by means of their electronic messaging.
Such a unified messaging system in accordance with this second type of architecture does, however, involve having to replicate the various messages in the respective memory spaces of all the messaging devices (back ends), thereby increasing the cost incurred by the increasing need for storage spaces for the latter. Another drawback for this kind of system is that it generates synchronization conflicts that are often difficult to resolve, with regard to unified access to the messages when the latter are of different types or formats in particular. Such a solution according to the prior art is also very costly and ill suited to implementation in the form of a service intended for the general public.
A third type of unified messaging system architecture known from the prior art aims to merge the various messaging devices, that is to say to merge the various “back ends”, so as to store all the messages received from these various messaging “back ends” on one and the same messaging server. It also makes it possible to avoid the replication of the messages on each messaging device, as in the case of the second architecture described hereinabove.
Such an approach according to the prior art does, however, have the drawback of requiring the respective technologies of the various messaging devices (back ends in particular) to be fundamentally sufficiently open and advanced to be able to be adapted to such an implementation possibility, which is rarely the case.
However, even assuming such openness and open-endedness of the latter, a drawback in this third type of architecture is linked to the fact that it demands data migrations that are often costly and risky, the latter generally inducing data losses relating to the stored messages.
A fourth type of unified messaging system architecture known from the prior art consists in unifying the communication system around a central directory.
According to such a solution, all the messages are stored centrally, as is the management of access to his messaging service by a user, in all its forms: electronic messages (email), audio/voice messages, video or fax messages.
Such an approach according to the prior art is relatively recent. It is as yet unproven but is already proving costly in terms of management and technical support of the hardware and software infrastructure that it requires to be implemented to be able to function.
The present invention offers a solution that does not have the drawbacks described hereinabove in relation to the various known types of unified messaging system architectures according to the prior art.